Tar sands oil and Keystone XL's dirty secret

Industry privately admits its pipeline would make oil neither safer nor cheaper for the US. The president must pick the alternative

Michigan oil spill
A Canada goose covered in oil attempts to fly out of the Kalamazoo river in Marshall, Michigan. The tar sands spill will cost at least $700m to clean up. Photograph: Jonathon Gruenke/AP

Picture this: a large, multibillion dollar Canadian corporation comes to the president of the United States and wants to build a 1,700-mile oil pipeline from Canada all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. After reviewing the project, it becomes clear that instead of reducing America's reliance on oil from overseas, this pipeline would carry oil across America, risking spills on our land and waters, just to export the oil to other countries. In addition, the pipeline would increase gasoline prices in America, add to our air pollution, and most importantly, be a major setback in the fight to reverse global warming.

Clearly, the president would say no to Big Oil on this one, wouldn't he?

This is the exact question facing President Obama as he reviews TransCanada's proposed Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline. Keystone XL could carry up to 900,000 barrels of dirty tar sands oil across America every day. Producing and refining tar sands oil is energy-intensive, and releases 82% more greenhouse gas emissions, as well as more poisonous mercury and arsenic, compared to conventional oil. Piping corrosive tar sands oil is risky, and Keystone XL would run over an aquifer that provides drinking water for millions of Americans.

Perhaps the Keystone XL decision has not been clear-cut for the Obama administration since the State Department, the agency in charge of the pipeline review, selected a contractor hand-picked by TransCanada to conduct environmental reviews. Cardno Entrix, the contractor selected, had financial ties to TransCanada and lists TransCanada as a "major client".

Unsurprisingly, Cardno Entrix's sugar-coated analyses of environmental risks are open to serious questions. Their report said a Keystone XL spill would "not require unique clean up procedures". Really? What about the tar sands spill into the Kalamazoo River, which closed sections of the river for more than a year, with a cleanup tab that has ballooned to $700m? The Environmental Protection Agency stated it had never seen a river so affected by so much submerged oil.

State Department officials tout the energy security benefits of Keystone XL, but TransCanada itself admits that by removing an oil oversupply in the Midwest, the pipeline would result in "an increase in the price of heavy crude" that should net Canadian oil producers a $1.9bn increase in revenue at the expense of American consumers. Gulf Coast refiners, which would receive tar sands oil from Keystone XL, have detailed a strategy to their investors to export the oil out of the United States.

In what I see as a positive sign, President Obama says he will decide the fate of Keystone XL personally. Unfortunately, the State Department is providing him with deeply flawed analysis. That is why I asked the State Department inspector general to investigate the conflicts of interest allegations. I appreciate that in response to the request I made, along with 14 other members of Congress, the inspector general agreed to conduct a special review of the State Department's handling of the Keystone XL proposal.

In my view, the evidence is overwhelming that this pipeline is not in the best interest of our environment or the economic interest of the American people, and the president should reject it. At the very least, he should put off a final decision on this project until the special review is complete and the results are made public.

In terms of energy policy, we have better options. Adopting President Obama's plan to move to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025 will save approximately 2.5m barrels of oil per day by 2030, which is more oil than we would import from Keystone XL, the Middle East and the Persian Gulf combined. Instead of raising gas prices on Americans, as Keystone XL would do, these fuel standards would save drivers $7,000 over the life of a vehicle.

President Obama should say yes to stronger fuel economy standards, and no to Keystone XL. By doing so, he will keep faith with his campaign promises to break our oil addiction and reverse global warming.


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Comments

80 comments, displaying oldest first

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  • KravMaga

    10 November 2011 2:34PM

    Adopting President Obama's plan to move to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025 will save approximately 2.5m barrels of oil per day by 2030,

    I've been hearing about minimum miles per gallon requirements since I was a kid in the 1970s.

    These requirements haven't been mandated yet and I don't see it happening anytime soon.

  • delphinia

    10 November 2011 2:44PM

    What's the environment got to do with anything? Or the well-being of the American people? The only thing that matters is short-term gain for the kleptocrats, who can buy their way out of future problems.

  • error418

    10 November 2011 2:51PM

    Every move that reduces the grip of totalitarian oil dealers like the regimes of Saudi Arabia or Iran is a good one in my eyes. The world's biggest oil junkies (the US) should be happy to get their fix from just over the border now.

  • kikithefrog

    10 November 2011 2:52PM

    Adopting President Obama's plan to move to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025 will save approximately 2.5m barrels of oil per day by 2030, which is more oil than we would import from Keystone XL, the Middle East and the Persian Gulf combined. Instead of raising gas prices on Americans, as Keystone XL would do, these fuel standards would save drivers $7,000 over the life of a vehicle.

    But they'd have to buy a new vehicle first.

  • Jamestown

    10 November 2011 2:53PM

    We need to focus on areas like the US Bakken oil field to extract, refine and use the product domestically until alternative fuels and green automobiles begin to truly reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

    I realize the unpopularity of domestic drilling but the fact remains we must tap into domestic reserves to ensure an oil supply is available. Breaking free from foreign oil will also break us free of protecting the flow of oil in the Middle East.

  • DavidWarnes

    10 November 2011 3:00PM

    Bankers should be forced to clean those birds up.

  • Definatelynotashark

    10 November 2011 3:06PM

    DavidWarnes
    10 November 2011 3:00PM
    Bankers should be forced to clean those birds up.

    Hell yeah, I blame Howard from the Halifax, the fecker.

  • Fomalhaut88

    10 November 2011 3:18PM

    Industry privately admits its pipeline would make oil neither safer nor cheaper for the US. The president must pick the alternative

    Said he, typing on a plastic keyboard, looking at a plastic PC screen, on a desk painted with varnish, in a house painted with petroleum products, in a house constructed with wiring that is covered in plastic, in a house that could not be built without the petroleum needed to power the digger that dug the foundations, with a driveway tarred with bitumen, and a car in the driveway that will not move (at all) without petroleum.

    Yet someone else has to "pick the alternative".

    If you really want to stop the importation of this petroleum you so deride, then stop using it yourself.

    I absolutely promise you that the EXACT moment you do, those dreadful oilmen and those truly awful oil companies will stop looking for it and petroleum will vanish from your vocabulary overnight.

    Yea, just think, all you have to do is stop using it and they will stop selling it to you.

    Go ahead.

  • kthxbye

    10 November 2011 3:19PM

    America should start using those Flintstones cars (bonus: decrease in the obese rate).

  • EarlRichards

    10 November 2011 3:21PM

    If there is supposed to be an energy shortage in the US, then, why are petroleum products from the Keystone XL, being exported to Europe and China? Can anyone answer this? America first.

  • cleblur

    10 November 2011 3:21PM

    Why invest time and money in dirty expensive oil when a cleaner alternative is already available? Faze out the petrol/gas stations and bring in battery exchange stations. What's not to like?

    http://www.betterplace.com/

  • mikedow

    10 November 2011 3:28PM

    What's so secretive about their efforts? They don't even try that anymore; why bother misinforming the impotent.

  • sun2day

    10 November 2011 3:29PM

    Faze out the petrol/gas stations and bring in battery exchange stations.

    Where does the power for these battery exchange stations come from?

    Coal, gas or oil-fired power stations perhaps?

  • MooseFreedomFighter

    10 November 2011 3:35PM

    Just how corrupt is the US...
    fantastic to see so called grown educated men destroying the world for profit..
    mankind really has lots its way....
    lets hope we destroy ourselves sooner than later so the planet can recover and live free of human destruction...

  • hopefulcyclist

    10 November 2011 3:42PM

    The global supply of conventional crude oil peaked, permanently, in 2006. Any increase in supply since then has come from natural gas liquids, tar sands, biofuels and gas and coal to liquids conversion plants.

    The US (and UK) peaked in their consumption of oil in 2008. The US is importing 3mbpd less than it did in 2008. (out a total imports of about 10mbpd ).

    The reason for this is simple. The US (and the rest of the OECD) are broke, and we are being outbid for oil by the developing nations, who use it more efficiently for each dollar of GDP. We are spending billions of dollars every month importing oil (and natural gas in the case of the UK) and we can no longer afford it.

    The price of oil has risen to balance supply and demand. Total supply is static, so global demand is static. Unless we use oil more efficiently, global GDP must remain static or start to decline.

    On current trends (No decline in supply) Growth in consumption from China et al will cut US oil imports to zero in 10 years. If supply starts to decline, the fall will be faster.
    Oil provides about 30% of the primary energy used by mankind. It cannot be matched for energy density and convenience of handling.

    Almost the entire industrial society is predicated on cheap plentiful oil for transport and industrial chemicals. It will take decades and incredible amounts of material and financial investment to move away from oil. Resources we do not have.

    The entire Western industrial society is facing existential crisis, as is being reflected in the financial markets.

  • NatashaFatale

    10 November 2011 3:47PM

    Can anyone think of any other circumstance where the right - do I have to list them? Rush and Sean and Bill and Glenn, the WSJ editorial page, Newt and Sarah and Michele and Rick-the-forgetful and Rick-the-frothy and Herm and two hundred and four congressdittos and oh hell I'll never make it in 5000 characters - can anyone think of any other circumstance where not one of these stalwarts grabs a perfect opportunity (in an election year!) to nail Hilary Clinton's State Department for such an obvious and suggestive conflict of interest?

  • gryff

    10 November 2011 3:57PM

    You may have seen this Mr Sanders ... or maybe not.


    The report, called Canada's Emissions Trends, was released quietly in July. It tracks changes in greenhouse gas output for a number of sectors between 2005 and 2020.

    Over that period, it projects that electricity generators will see their emissions fall by 31 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, largely as a result of coal-fired plants giving way to natural gas-fired power.

    But that figure is far eclipsed by the oil sands, which will see carbon output rise by 62 megatonnes, tripling its 2005 levels.

    It is from an Environment Canada forecast of Canada's carbon output over the next decade published in the Globe and Mail.

    Oil sands expected to undo carbon cuts

    So while other parts of Canada are making an attempt to reduce CO2 emissions at a cost that will be born eventually by us poor Canadian tax payers, the Alberta/TransCanada/Oil Industry blow any savings in CO2 emissions right out the window.

    Some of that "82% more greenhouse gas emissions" ends up being part of Canada's emissions problem.

    gryff :)

  • warmachineuk

    10 November 2011 4:06PM

    I can't see how more oil, even if it requires lots of energy to extract, raises oil prices. With only finite production and high demand, suppliers demand higher and higher prices till enough purchasers drop out. More, hugely expensive oil means purchaser's price ceilings are exceeded and they won't bother. More affordable oil means purchasers with lower price ceilings will stay in.

    However, that oil prices are high enough to justify tar sand oil means the days of cheap energy are over.

  • JetexJim

    10 November 2011 4:12PM

    Completly correct, hopefulcyclist.

    The only thing that you missed out is that our high energy agriculture, dependent on fertilizers and pesticides, which is also hydrocarbon based, will only add to the crises.

    It's not about cars or a downturn to the economy, it's about food.

  • AlbertaRabbit

    10 November 2011 4:15PM

    How far away is the United States from another energy crisis?

    The Shiites in Saudi Arabia could decide that they are tired of being second class citizens and throw their own Arab Spring. Given that they live in the major oil producing part of the country, this could well shut down oil exports.

    That's all it would take to create a world-wide energy shortage. With Americans lined up at the pumps and their heating bills soaring, those politicians who opposed the pipeline would not find a lot of favour with the voters.

  • squareroot

    10 November 2011 4:23PM

    But they'd have to buy a new vehicle first.


    So the government needs to tax new car sales differentially, so that cars meeting the 54.5 mpg-US standard are the cheapest to own over their entire lifecycle.

    I assume the federal government has the power to do this?

  • AlbertaRabbit

    10 November 2011 4:30PM

    Producing and refining tar sands oil is energy-intensive, and releases 82% more greenhouse gas emissions,

    That Sanders quotes such misleading statistics undercuts his entire argument. He obviously wants the reader to think "tar sands oil is 82% dirtier!"

    Yes it takes more energy to produce and refine bitumen oil than it does more conventional oil. But the best measurement of CO2 emissions is "well to wheels" - that is, to measure all CO2 emissions inlcuding production, refining, transportation, distribution, and burning.

    It's generally agreed that bitumen oil produces somewhere between 5% to 20% more CO2 than conventional oil. I consider 12% to be good working estimate. This is about the same as oil from California, Venezuela, and Nigeria, all of which are heavy (viscous).

    Nobody wants that 12%, but it's a long way from the 82% Sanders would have the casual reader walk away with. What's more, we can expect this value to fall with time as technology improves.

  • thirdrail

    10 November 2011 4:37PM

    If the USA doesn't want to buy it, China will. Please be prepared for the time when you can't buy plastic anything. Not to mention having no jobs because you have no industry whatsoever.

    Anyway, I don't think it's the wicked Canadians who want to gouge you. Aren't your refiners already doing that? Aren't they paying WTI prices for crude, but charging Brent prices for the refined products? That's a difference of $20 a barrel. Is it getting passed on to consumers?

    Of course, I must be wrong about all this - you must have carefully considered these small matters. Please instruct me.

  • tcollins

    10 November 2011 4:45PM

    If the USA doesn't want to buy it, China will.

    Assuming the residents of British Columbia are bigger suckers than the US.

  • thirdrail

    10 November 2011 4:53PM

    @ Jamestown

    Doesn't US Bakkan oil go by Canadian pipelines? To get WTI prices at Cushing?

    World oil production has been flat for 5 years, despite high prices and a huge drilling program. Face it - we use 70,000,000 barrels a day, that's 10 billion barrels in less than half a year. The biggest fields are declining.

    A heroic domestic drilling program might succeed in causing environmental disaster and big executive bonuses, but it CAN'T SOLVE THE PROBLEM. Only solar can do that.

  • AlbertaRabbit

    10 November 2011 4:56PM

    Here are the top five oil importers to the U,S. in thousands of barrels per day:

    Canada: 2,240
    Mexico: 1,150
    Saudi Arabia: 1,075
    Nigeria: 854
    Venezuela: 806

    Of these:

    o Mexican and Venezuelan production is dropping due to inept handling of their industry.
    o The Venezuelan government is openly hostile to the U.S. and is quickly expanding its petroleum exports to China.
    o Saudi Arabia is a despotic totalitarian regime and is vulnerable to uprising.
    o Nigeria is a human-rights and environmental hell hole whose heavy oil is at least as dirty as bitumen oil.

    So, America, choose your poison.

  • thirdrail

    10 November 2011 4:58PM

    @tcollins

    Assuming the residents on British Columbia have anything to say about it. There is already a large oil pipeline terminating in Vancouver. Is it not being doubled, even as we write?

  • gryff

    10 November 2011 5:00PM

    That Sanders quotes such misleading statistics undercuts his entire argument. He obviously wants the reader to think "tar sands oil is 82% dirtier!"

    No he states exactly what he means:

    "Producing and refining tar sands oil is energy-intensive, and releases 82% more greenhouse gas emissions"

    If you follow his link it is to The Econmist - hardly a left wing environmental rag - which states (last sentence in second paragraph):

    According to America's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), producing Canadian tar-sands oil generates 82% more greenhouse-gas emissions than does the average barrel refined in the United States.

    gryff :)

  • kikithefrog

    10 November 2011 5:01PM

    So the government needs to tax new car sales differentially, so that cars meeting the 54.5 mpg-US standard are the cheapest to own over their entire lifecycle.

    I am not American, but I assume there are millions of Americans who, like me, have never owned a new car in their lives.

    To these people the figure of $7000 Mr Sanders quotes as being saved over the life of a vehicle are almost irrelevant - they won't get to drive a type of car manufactured in 2012 until about 2020.

    In a similar way the fact that here in the UK one can save X thousand pounds over the lifetime of solar panels installed with the current government subsidy is almost irrelevant to me. I can't afford the solar panels in the first place.

  • meltyman

    10 November 2011 5:02PM

    We could reduce demand for oil for transportation and heating fuel but keep using it for plastics etc., with 60 mpg requirement by 2020. It can/could be done: in the US and elsewhere it is only VANITY that prevents us using smaller, lower, slower, and far more efficient vehicles for everyday mobility . That way the Saudis et al. still have a market for their goo but we stop burning the stuff: it's just soooo Neolithic. Now if we can just get scaled up renewables and 4th gen nuclear off the ground...

  • AlbertaRabbit

    10 November 2011 5:18PM



    The statistic is likely accurate, but is obviously designed to deceive. He has chosen one part of the total CO2 emissions and published that. It's a thinly veiled attempt to confuse the reader.

    A more common deception is to claim that bitumen extraction generates three times the CO2 than conventional oil. This is roughly correct, but is only part of the picture since it only covers extraction, which is very efficient for conventional oil. Predictably many commenters have since claimed that bitumen oil is three times dirtier than conventional, which is totally wrong.

    Had Sanders truly cared about giving an accurate picture, he would have cited the "well to wheels" figures or something similar.

    Really, does Sanders think that such games will go unnoticed? And once called on it. does he think his credibility will not suffer?

  • thirdrail

    10 November 2011 5:24PM

    @gryff

    I think that Alberta is referring to the fact that oil must be
    1. produced, and
    2. refined.

    The useful figure is the total of the above. It is irrelevant how easy it is to get oil out of the ground if it is hell to refine. Sulphur is a problem. Molecular weight is a problem.

    In any case, some sources must be dirtier than average, by definition. That is what an average implies. What matters is whether you can replace the dirtiest with something less dirty, and that is not addressed.

    It makes little sense to compare production emissions when it is the total of production emissions plus refining emissions that matter. Sometimes a statistic is just a statistic.

  • thirdrail

    10 November 2011 5:30PM

    @tcollins

    Prince Rupert is Northern Gateway, I believe. I am referring to
    1. the possibility that other routes are already developed and being enlarged.
    2. Also, I understand that the Environmental Assessment process has been weakened. So I think that your assumption, that the residents of British Columbia will decide, may not be correct.

  • cleblur

    10 November 2011 5:50PM

    @ sun2day

    '''Faze out the petrol/gas stations and bring in battery exchange stations. '''

    "Where does the power for these battery exchange stations come from?

    Coal, gas or oil-fired power stations perhaps?"

    If you'd visited the link I provided you could have saved yourself the time you wasted posting your questions.

    You can lead a horse to water....

    http://www.betterplace.com/the-opportunity-environment

  • thirdrail

    10 November 2011 5:58PM

    @cleblur

    I am sympathetic, but ...

    How long to build this infrastructure? Do you think we will have the time? The Pentagon and German Army studies say not.

    Who will pay? Looks like another liquidity crisis coming to me.

    Is there any appetite for increased taxes and public funds? I think not, but I could be wrong. Hope so.

  • macktan894

    10 November 2011 6:42PM

    "Unfortunately, the State Department is providing him with deeply flawed analysis. That is why I asked the State Department inspector general to investigate the conflicts of interest allegations."


    The entire govt is in conflict of interest, accepting bribes aka campaign donations from special interest industries that it is in charge of regulating.

    Without protest, this would be in the works right now. That's why the police are out there beating peaceful protesters who only want a true democracy.

  • Stealthbong

    10 November 2011 7:17PM

    Bernie, you are one of the very few American politicians worth listening to these days, and I'll always have time for an article from you. However...

    In what I see as a positive sign, President Obama says he will decide the fate of Keystone XL personally

    Why is this a positive sign? What has been positive about Obama's general decision making thus far in his presidency?

    Adopting President Obama's plan to move to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025 will save approximately 2.5m barrels of oil per day by 2030, which is more oil than we would import from Keystone XL, the Middle East and the Persian Gulf combined.

    European and US car manufacturers have had the technology to reach that figure for years, so imposing the standard 14 years hence is hardly pulling your weight as far as going green is concerned.

    Unfortunately, if there is money to be made out of selling natural resources, sooner or later, those natural resources are going to be sold. So although a no from Obama might save the US environment from a potential catastrophe, vast swathes of Canadian wilderness will still be raped and pillaged.

  • DeLeMaIn

    10 November 2011 7:22PM

    I really don't care about your numbers. The only number that's of concern is the one indicating global temperature rise and the ability we have to remedy our contribution. Dire predictions of joblessness and increasing economic problems are rather meaningless when everyone begins to starve and the rest begin emergency swimming lessons.

  • Fomalhaut88

    10 November 2011 7:29PM

    meltyman :

    Yeah yeah yeah. We're all hypocrites. So we should do nothing?

    How else would you describe someone who uses petroleum hand over fist then beats on the supplier for providing it?

    Without it, nothing moves, and you would have no plastics and few fertilisers.

    If you want to go there, then stop using it.

  • CanadianKilljoy

    10 November 2011 7:33PM

    I really don't care about your numbers. The only number that's of concern is the one indicating global temperature rise and the ability we have to remedy our contribution. Dire predictions of joblessness and increasing economic problems are rather meaningless when everyone begins to starve and the rest begin emergency swimming lessons.


    Really those are the only numbers you care about?

    How rational.

    One wonders why you care about the oil sands at all considering they represent a mere 0.04% of the entire worlds CO2 emissions. Losing it isn't going to lower the temperature.

  • CanadianKilljoy

    10 November 2011 7:39PM

    The statistic is likely accurate, but is obviously designed to deceive. He has chosen one part of the total CO2 emissions and published that. It's a thinly veiled attempt to confuse the reader.

    Not much different than when they write about the open pit mines and then go on to tell the reader that the "tar sands" is greater than the size of England, (that you cn see in space! Garsh!), purposely leaving the reader with the ridiculous notion that there is an open pit mine in Alberta the size of England, when what they mean is the area of land that contains oil in the ground - untouched a it has been forever - is larger than England.

    ...oh, and naturally I can see my house from sapce so that description is put there to purposely avoid givng the reader an actual number, in hectares or something, so as to actually inform the reader.

    But then again maybe people don't care about silly things like numbers.

  • cleblur

    10 November 2011 7:53PM

    The tar sands XL pipeline to the US won't be approved or disapproved for another 18 months according to Washington.

    In the meantime let's see more electric cars on the roads and generous subsidies to encourage buyers.

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